by Saifedean Ammous

By now, anyone who has followed the Israeli massacre of Palestinians will be accustomed to the absurd reality that the life of a Palestinian is worth about 100th to 1000th the life of an Israeli, depending on the news outfit. “Respectable” media outlets like the Guardian and the BBC will give every one hundred dead Palestinians the same space they give to one dead Israeli, whereas crappy propaganda outfits like the NY Post, NY Times, the New Yorker, CNN and Fox News, will give every 1,000 Palestinians the same space they give one Israeli. This has become normal.

But today, this racist arithmetic was taken to absurd levels by the folks at the Associated Press who decided that it also applies to demonstrators in New York.

I was part of a demonstration on Sunday that had thousands and thousands of people show up and protest the Israeli mass-murder of Palestinians.

I was at the front of the march when we turned on 58th street. I stopped on the sidewalk to chat with police and to examine the crowd. It took the back of the demo some 20-30 minutes to get to the corner of 58th after the front had reached it.

I spoke to the chief policeman at the demo and asked him for a crowd estimate. He said 20,000 was a reasonable estimate, though he would not confirm that this would be the police’s final and official estimate. Since he is the one who will be issuing the crowd estimate, it’s safe to assume it would’ve definitely exceeded 15,000. It certainly could not go as low, as… I don’t know… 150.

So imagine my surprise as I come home, turn on my computer, and find this article by Karen Matthews, for the AP, claiming that there were 150 people in the demonstration. I’ve managed to get pictures and videos that show incontrovertibly how utterly nonsensical this article is.

This CNN I-Report video was made by someone who heard the crowds chanting from 50 floors up (which should give you an indication of the numbers) and took out their camera:

Note that in this footage the camera cannot show both the beginning and the end of the demonstration. Even from this height, the demo was too long to be caught in one frame. Also note that the crowd that appears around the 00:20 mark is different from the crowd that appears at the 1:10 mark, since the first crowd had two giant Palestinian flags spread on top of it while the second group doesn’t. These are two ends of the demonstration, not the same crowd pictured again. Once you take that into account, you will realize that this truly was a huge demonstration.

But what is even more ridiculous about this is how a pro-Israel demonstration on the same day managed to get not only far more (and far more favorable) coverage on the media, but also a precise (and probably exaggerated) count of the demonstrators. By all accounts, the pro-Palestine demonstration dwarfed the pro-Israel one, as testified by people who saw both, people who went to the pro-Israel demo and then saw the video above, and people who saw videos of both.

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by Gerald Dworkin

I have been thinking recently about lying. I don't mean I have been thinking of telling a lie. Many of the lies I tell do not need to be thought about very much. “I am fine.” “Not at all. I think that color is quite flattering.” “Let me pay. My university will reimburse me.” “Yes, Dr. Phillips, I floss every day.” I mean I have been thinking about what is a lie and is it ever okay to tell one and why, if we think lying is wrong, so many of us are liars.

This thinking is not occasioned by some personal crisis of character, or being faced with a difficult decision to tell the truth. I am a philosopher and have just finished teaching a graduate seminar called “The Truth about Lying.” That seemed a cool title last year when I had to propose one for the catalog. It seems to me now, well not quite a lie, but more like false advertising. If I really knew the truth about this difficult subject I would, as they say, be rich.

I wanted to think about this topic because it seemed to me to have a number of features not shared by other moral concepts– such as murder, cruelty, theft, or promise-breaking. First,while almost all of us would refrain from these acts, most of us lie on a daily basis. (As do doctors– at least if you think prescribing placebos is lying. In a recent survey 45-58% , depending on how the question was phrased, prescribe them on a regular basis. If it's any consolation, the sugar pill seems to have been replaced by vitamins.) Second, if any of us were to act cruelly when this was pointed out to us we would either deny that was an appropriate description of our action or admit we were cruel and, at least, feel guilt or remorse. Whereas many of us are prepared to defend our lies–indeed, to glory in them sometimes (“Boy, did I have you going! Gotcha.”) Third, there seem to be contexts in which not only does the fact that something is a lie not count in any way against what we are doing, but seems to count in favor–poker, spying, lying contests, getting someone to a surprise party, lying to the murderer at the door about where his victim is hiding.

There seem to be very large differences between people as to what they regard as a lie. A , who makes a mistake about the day of the week, says, ” Damn. I lied. It's Tuesday not Wednesday.” But many people distinguish between being wrong and lying. B, who believes that today is Tuesday ( it is actually Wednesday) says to C, “Today is Wednesday”. Some people think that B lied; others that he tried to lie but failed. Some people think that gross exaggeration– “I haven't eaten for over a year”– is a lie; others do not. Now most ethical concepts have borderline cases– is not returning the lost wallet theft? is failing to rescue the drowning child murder?– but with lying it sometimes seems that the borderline is the whole territory.

Another interesting feature is that some people make a sharp moral distinction between lying and other ways of misleading by what one says. If you ask me what happened to your mail, and I say “Someone stole it from your box”without mentioning that the someone was me, some people will say “Well, at least you didn't lie” as if that somehow makes what I did less serious. The medieval Catholic Church elevated the idea of equivocation– saying something true but meaning it one way rather than another, as in the Saint found who reported to would-be persecutors “That Saint is not far from here,”– to Clintonian heights. Many people—myself included—see a difference between lying to someone and failing to tell them something that they have an interest in being told.

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[Below is my translation of Georgics, the first section of Antonio Gamoneda's book Libro del Frío (Book of Cold.) Gamoneda, born May 30th 1931, was winner of the Cervantes Prize in 2006 and it is difficult to overstate how largely he glowers over the world of Spanish and Latin American poetry, though he is little known in the U.S. He was born in Oviedo but by the time he was three lived in León, and has lived there ever since. The town and its landscape figure greatly in his poetry, both aesthetically and as it was there where he saw Franco's repression first hand, during the Spanish Civil war.

I will follow next month with another section from the book and a short essay on translating Gamoneda.

Please bear in mind that individual poems begin and end between ———–. They are two, sometimes one sentence poems that each receive their own page. For space and blogging comfort, I have smushed them.]

Alan Page

Georgics

———–

It is cold by the springs. I climbed until my heart was tired.

There is black grass on the hillside and purplish lilies in the shade, but ¿what am I doing before the abyss?

Under the soundless eagles, immensity lacks meaning.

———-

Between the dung and lightning bolt, I hear the shepherd’s cry.

There is still light on the sparrowhawk’s wings as I climb down to the damp pyres.

I have heard the snow’s bell, I have seen purity’s fungus, I have created oblivion.

———–

Faced with the vineyards scalded by winter, I think on fear and light (a single substance in my eyes,)

I think about the rain and the distances cut through by wrath.

———–

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//
Black Sunday Shoes
Jim Culleny

Grandpa was stiff and stark
as the handle of an old world hoe
but grandmother must have had her dreams
……………………..
At a window in a stuffed chair she sat
fingering a rosary gazing down Roessler murmuring
Hail Mary’s through the pane
bead by bead
……………………..
At other times in that chair
she stroked her long greyblack hair
……………………..
with a stiff brush then rolled and pinned it
into a persistent bun
……………………..
as sun streamed through the top sash
through laddered blinds
……………………..
and stroked the red rug with light
well into the room
……………………..
A clock ticked somewhere
a door slammed.
……………………..
She boiled chicken
served tea with milk and
called me Jeemy in sentences
loaded and laced with Slovak
so my green ears tasted the sounds
of the foothills of the high Tatras of the Carpathians
as if they were dining on poems in Matiasovce or Staraves.
……………………..
In her kitchen a crumb-haloed
babka loaf next to a knife on a plate
sat upon a brown enamel table
laid out like a detail in a peasant tableau
painted by a Slovak Van Gogh
……………………..
She placed her plump hand on mine
my small palm lying still
a five-spoked hummock on a mesa
……………………..
~ ~ ~
……………………..
In the plush back seat of Matkovsky’s
two-ton Chrysler returning from mass
on wide whitewalls rolling
in the time before seatbelts
in the time before TV
in the days before e-Babel
in the days before stillness disappeared
she leaned forward in the seat
her ample cantilievered bosom
secured by straps and clips
buried beneath a modest sequined bodice
one hand gripping the loop over the door
peering through another window
which opened upon scenes passing
of another of her dreams which
(perhaps)
she lived in real time in her new world
having long shaken the dust of childhood
and Slovakia from her high-topped
stout-heeled
……………………..
black
Sunday
shoes
……………………..

by Colin Marshall

To modern Western viewers — and even to a lot of modern Eastern viewers — the films of Yasujirō Ozu, with their rigorously mannered appearance and undeniably narrow topical range, feel neither accessible nor relevant. What a shame that is. The Ozu enthusiast’s typical response to dubious uninitiated friends is that, behind the aesthetic formalism, deliberately restrained acting and unshifting focus on the midcentury Japanese household lies a great artistic bounty. But that sounds wrong, somehow; these qualities don’t build a wall meant to keep out the unworthy viewer, nor do they simply emerge as the by-products of a peculiar authorial process. They’re the very architecture of Ozu’s style, the struts supporting, the spaces accommodating and the entryways leading us into what’s so stunningly effective about his films.

Ozu was a craftsman. The analogy is hardly unique to me — best of luck finding a film writer who hasn’t made it — but it clicks so well that employing it is irresistible. From the late 1920s to the early 1960s, Ozu directed over fifty films, refining (and occasionally expanding) his cinematic technique with each one, using similar elements every time but honing the skill with which he united them. Save for a few very early projects, all of his movies are, broadly speaking, thematically and compositionally alike. In his exceptional book on the filmmaker’s life and work, Japanese film scholar Donald Richie observes that Ozu “had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution,” that “the conventionality of the events in the Ozu film is even by Japanese standards extreme” and that these films “are shot from an almost invariable angle, that of a person sitting on the tatami matting of the Japanese room.”

That a stationary camera, mundane subject matter and the same elements revisited over and over (Ozu even recycled character names from script to script) comes as a turn-off to filmgoers today is perhaps unsurprising. But just one viewing of an Ozu film — practically any Ozu film — should suffice to make a solid case of why these aren’t necessarily negatives. Ozu’s priority was not showing his audience the world, nor showing them experiences alien to their own, nor forcing them to observe from unconventional vantage points. He was concerned with one element above all else, an element compared to which all the others were merely unwanted opportunities for distraction.

That element is character, and at the center of 1958’s Equinox Flower, the onetime black-and-white stalwart’s debut in glorious Agfacolor, stands one of Ozu’s most fascinating. Portrayed by former matinee heartthrob Shin Saburi, the middle-aged Wataru Hirayama starts the film looking like just another of Ozu’s upper-middle-class patriarchs. But he’s quickly humanized at the wedding of a friend’s daughter, when he’s called upon to deliver an impromptu speech. He expresses admiration for the bride and groom, a couple who managed to come together without their parents’ hands arranging it, and half-jokingly nods toward his envy, his own marriage having been of the “unromantic” arranged variety. When a colleague later visits Hirayama’s office and confides his worry about his uncommunicative daughter who’s moved in with her boyfriend, Hirayama readily agrees to help out by visiting the bar at which she works and having a talk with her.

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Nothing kills the enjoyment of music for some people faster than trying to analyze it. But I’m obsessed with solving the mystery of Arthur Alexander. His body of work is small. His songs are musically and lyrically simple, even simplistic. Almost nobody but the most dedicated music lovers remember his name today. Yet he was the only songwriter to win pop music’s Triple Crown: His songs have been covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, arguably the three most respected songwriting acts in rock and roll history. Dusty Springfield, Ry Cooder, Roger McGuinn, and dozens of others¹sang them too.

I’ve been wondering about these tunes for 45 years now, since I was ten years old. Maybe I’m getting closer to understanding them, But I’m not there yet. After all, his chord progressions were basic. His lyrics seem banal on paper: “Every day I have to cry some/wipe the water from my eyes some.” “Oh my name is Johnny Heartbreak …” “Me and Frank were the best of friends …” But by at least one objective measure – the artists who covered him – he was the greatest rock songwriter who ever lived. Subjectively, his best songs are impossible for me to resist as a listener and indescribably rewarding to sing.

So who the hell was this guy, and what made him so good?

He had a brush with R&B stardom as a singer, but really made his name as a songwriter in the 60’s. Yet even after the Beatles and Stones covered him he had trouble collecting royalties. He lived out the next 25 years as a bus driver, interrupted only by one small hit in the 70’s. Then he then enjoyed a brief comeback in 1993² before dying suddenly.

I was first introduced to Alexander, like many of my generation, by the Beatles’ cover of “Anna.” That track is a great reminder that, before he went on his odyssey from musician to activist to martyr to Apple icon, John Lennon was one of the great rock and roll singers. Alexander’s songs lean to melodrama, and Lennon milks this one for all it’s got. Alexander’s simple vocal patterns leave singers a lot of room to fill the space, and Lennon's able to pull out tricks Alexander hinted at in his original recording, like the Buddy Holly-ish pseudo-yodels that punctuate the bridge (“oh-oh-oh-oh …”)

That’s one of Arthur Alexander’s secrets: His lean song structures make them a pleasure to sing. And his recordings provide suggestions rather than instructions. Where other writers fill every measure with musical and lyrical acrobatics, Alexander’s are spare frames singers can hang their hearts on.

Emotionally, each song has a story arc. If you wrote songs using the Syd Field screenwriting method they’d turn out a lot like Alexander’s. They’re three-minute mini-operas full of conflict and resolution. Take “You Better Move On,” which the Rolling Stones covered in 1964: A poor boy’s talking to his wealthier rival, and he humbly admits he can never give his love the good things he wants her to have. But then he turns on his competitor … “I’ll never let her go,” he says, “I love so.” Then the air fills with tension. “I think you better go now,” he says quietly, “I’m getting mighty mad.” Soft-spokenness can be more menacing than a raised voice, and Arthur Alexander knew that.

Sound corny? Lame? Yeah, maybe. But listen to this cover by Mr. Ironic Distance himself, Randy Newman (before Newman launches into his own “It’s Money That Matters” ):

There’s no distancing in Newman’s performance or Mark Knopfler's accompaniment, no sense of anything but the drama in each moment. That’s the best thing about Arthur Alexander’s songs: They’re irony-proof.

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